stsadm -o. What does the -o mean?

Question

I am working on a large SharePoint farm, mainly with the backend SQL Servers. We have always used stsadm -o for all stsadm functions, but no one seems to know why. I can't seem to find the info specific for stsadm, would it be general Windows command-line sytax?

Answer 1

The -o is short for -operation. It basically specifies the operation of the command.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261956.aspx

Answer 2

actually -o[peration] operationname distinguishes actual commands from -help operationname requests